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RG3

The Promise

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Overview

He’s been called many things—Heisman Trophy winner, MVP, the savior of the Washington Redskins—but to his millions of fans, Robert Griffin III is known simply as RG3.

Robert Griffin III was a preternaturally gifted athlete from a young age, but in those early days he played nearly every sport except football. He seemed pointed toward stardom, but would it be in basketball or maybe in track, where he qualified for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials as a hurdler? As for playing football, Griffin first had to overcome his mother’s objections to the violence and danger by making a “Pinkie Promise” with her that no one would catch him. Eventually, he began to realize that all of his remarkable talents—unrivaled speed, pinpoint accuracy, exceptional intelligence, single-minded drive—combined into a potent force that few quarterbacks could rival. What followed seemed almost destined: a football scholarship to Baylor University, three exceptional seasons capped by winning the Heisman Trophy, and the 2012 draft—where Griffin, as the second overall pick, became the franchise quarterback for one of the oldest and most storied football teams in the country.In RG3: The Promise, award-winning Washington Post reporter Dave Sheinin provides an in-depth, behind-the-scenes account of Griffin’s phenomenal rookie year—and offers a unique and intimate look inside the transformation one of the NFL’s brightest young stars.

Praise

“Robert Griffin III is the most exciting athlete to come to Washington in 20 years. And there’s nobody better to write about him than Dave Sheinin. Dave Sheinin writes like Robert Griffin plays.”—Tony Kornheiser

“Robert Griffin III was THE story in Washington even before the Redskins drafted him and Dave Sheinin has chronicled that story from day one with the kind of insight not often seen in this era of the insulated, over-protected athlete. Griffin’s story is worth telling and Sheinin is uniquely qualified to tell it.”—John Feinstein

“A skillfully told tale of the most exciting young player the NFL may have ever seen. Dave Sheinin holds nothing back. With RG3’s insight, he examines the dark side of the game and leaves us wondering if football in some places has become something less than human.”—Tim Green, New York Times–bestselling author and former Atlanta Falcons defensive end

“Sometimes there is a life in sports you want to know about before a career plays itself out. Robert Griffin III has had one of those lives, as interesting as the way he plays football.”—Mike Lupica

“There is no doubt that Robert Griffin III—that would be RG3, in modern text-speak—is the face of the professional football future. He is the mobile quarterback in a mobile time, dashing and daring, an escape artist who can win games with his feet or his arms, then talk about what he did in complete and interesting sentences. Alas, the danger of his job was underlined in his last game of last season, when he limped off the field, headed for major knee surgery. Will he be able to stay in one piece long enough to fulfill all of his promise? Or will the violence of his chosen game make him another famous casualty? Dave Sheinin looks at all of this and more in his sweet biography of football’s newest star. Terrific stuff.”—Leigh Montville, New York Times–bestselling author and sports columnist

“Dave Sheinin meticulously describes the collision of a nice young man and a brutal sport. Here is everything a reader needs to know about the perils of the new age of the mobile quarterback.”—George Vecsey, former New York Times sports columnist and author of Stan Musial: An American Life